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By Ron Donoho
Photo by Photograph by Michael Rutherford/Superstock
(page 1 of 2)
Toni Atkins was mentally prepared to lose. At least, she thought she was. No one was sure if the vote would be 6-3 or 5-4. But Atkins knew going into the December 4 City Council meeting it was highly likely the Boy Scouts of America would get to keep leasing public land in Balboa Park.Atkins is San Diego’s District 3 councilmember. She’s also a lesbian. The Boy Scouts do not allow homosexuals—or those who do not believe in God—in their organization.
The lease renewal passed 6-3. The minority included Atkins, Donna Frye and Ralph Inzunza. Voting for the 25-year lease extension were Mayor Dick Murphy, Scott Peters, Byron Wear, George Stevens, Brian Maienschein and Jim Madaffer.
“It didn’t occur to me until after the vote how personal this was for me,” says Atkins. “Before December 4, I wondered if my colleagues would discriminate against me. It turns out they would. It doesn’t feel good.”
George Stevens was the only Democrat to vote for the lease extension. “I take exception to people who say I should be sympathetic to discrimination,” says Stevens, who is African-American, an ordained minister and currently running for state Assembly. “Being homosexual has nothing to do with discrimination for color. If you say nothing about your sexual preference, you can still get a job. That wasn’t always the case for me... Gays are fighting for what they believe is correct. That’s what they should do. That’s what I have done, and I have been jailed for it in the past. But I don’t agree with this battle. And I won’t use the Boy Scouts as a battlefield.”
Informed of Stevens’ comments, Atkins responds evenly: “It’s interesting a person who has faced discrimination would seek to minimize the discrimination of others.”
Let’s backtrack. One has to look pretty long—and pretty low—to find anybody who thinks the Boy Scouts of America don’t have some wonderful programs that enrich kids and communities. My own Scouting memories are distant but fond—hiking, camping, putting a live crayfish in Ed Bunker’s sleeping bag. The crayfish caper didn’t earn anyone a merit badge. But Scouting does teach young people useful and helpful skills, like orienteering, astronomy and water safety.
The public perception of the organization, chartered by Congress in 1916, has changed since kids first memorized the Scout Law that demands they be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. And the Scout Oath, which asks, among other things, that a scout keep himself “morally straight.”
In the June 2000 case of Dale v. Boy Scouts, the United States Supreme Court ruled the private organization has a First Amendment right to freedom of association. The Scouts are therefore legally free to exclude gays and nonbelievers from their ranks.
Late last year, the San Diego City Council voted to extend the Scouts’ lease on the 15.6-acre Camp Balboa, as well as an aquatic facility on Fiesta Island. The sweetheart deals entail annual rents of $1. The Boy Scouts also pay a $2,500 administrative fee, and must make $1.7 million worth of improvements to Camp Balboa over the next seven years.
The issue here is not the right of a private organization to restrict membership. The Boy Scouts won that right in court. What is at issue is the public subsidy of a group not open to all citizens of San Diego.
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